


Fairy Tales of Modern Men

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: picfor1000, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-05
Updated: 2010-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-07 01:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The darkness in fairy tales. [Note: This is not a fairy tale fic.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairy Tales of Modern Men

**Author's Note:**

> For picfor1000. Done just in time.

He had three lines tattooed on his back. They were to the left, just over the dip and curve that formed the top of his ass. Carson was fascinated by them. Two were blue, one purple, and there were names on the lines. It was a memorial, Carson thought, but the one time he’d asked Radek about it, Radek had pressed his lips together and shook his head.

“Please not to ask.”

And Carson had nodded his assent because Radek’s nearly perfect English only sounded like that when he was deep in concentration or incredibly upset. He had pressed his hand against Radek’s knee and rubbed Radek’s shoulder when Radek had leaned into him.

He never asked again, but he spent a great deal of time considering the possibilities. Those names could be anyone. Carson considered the possibility of a wife and children somewhere back on Earth. His imagination ran away with him, and he saw them huddled and poor, the wife with a scarf on her head, the children barefoot and selling matchsticks to tourists. He shook himself out of that idea quickly; blamed Radek and the way he told fairy tales to the Athosian children for his ridiculousness.

Carson wondered if they were for friends, people Radek had known before the expedition. People Radek may have known in the Czech Republic who had teased him gently about his terrible eyesight and slung an arm around him as they stumbled home from a pub after his going away party before he left for the States. Gangly men with lopsided smiles and scuffed brown shoes. Maybe a girl, with pretty black hair and soft eyes, and a friendly peck for all the boys when they dropped her safe on her doorstep, a little too drunk but otherwise perfectly fine. Perhaps Radek wanted to remember them, remember that they’d been there first; the people who had known him in his formative years as a young man running around streets older than most everything in that crazy country of America with its universities and scholarships for exceptionally bright Engineering students.

And then, one night, after a particularly regular day of nothing special, Radek showed up at Carson’s door with a large bottle of bluish-white moonshine and two shot glasses. Carson let him in, took the kiss Radek brushed on his lips, and watched as he settled in the middle of the floor, legs out in front of him, moonshine to his left, shot glasses lined up next to it. Carson sat next to him, touched his hair, watched his eyes.

“Radek?”

He started to talk. It was an odd mix of English and Czech that Carson understood in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Radek told him a story, a fairy tale like the originals, with darkness and sadness and the possibility of happiness at the end.

There had been four of them. Three boys and a girl. Radek had been second youngest, after two boys, two years before the baby girl. They were a happy family. Plenty to eat, a place to lay their heads. There were occasional problems, noises outside from people not happy with the way things were run. Their bellies were full. Their lives were content. The Parents lined them up, kissed the tops of their heads, and sent them off to school. The little boy Radek had shown so much promise. He loved numbers. He counted all day. He taught his big brothers the hard multiplication, explained it to them like their teachers couldn’t. They should have hated him a little, maybe, for being so smart, but they wrestled with him, and threw around a ball, and didn’t care at all that he was so much smarter. When he became too much, they sent him to the baby girl. Told him to teach her, and he did. He taught everyone.

One day, he corrected the teacher. The teacher called the Parents. The little boy Radek should be tested for genius. The Parents said yes. Test the little boy Radek. His scores caused a celebration. He got to wear a sparkly blue hat and have cake. Everyone was happy. Everyone was happy for a very long time.

But then, then the pain. The part of the fairy tale that got lost in the movies. Radek, a little older, a young man, coming home for a visit. He’s been in America. He’s seen so many things. He brings back the cheap chocolate that he knows they won’t like but that they’ll still eat because it’s from America. When he steps off the plane, there is no one to greet him. No brothers. No baby sister. He calls home. Perhaps they are late. When Mother answers, she promises to be there soon, says they must have lost track of time. Silly children.

There was an accident, they discover. The car slid off the road, it flipped, and they died. He is suddenly and without any planning, an only child. But there were three others, and when Mother shuts down and stares at the wall, and Father takes care of the arrangements, slightly older Radek sits quietly and tries to remember everything about two brothers and a baby sister and being in the middle of them all. Of being little Radek, who always had someone nearby to help him, to play with him, to pick him up from the airport. There were four, and now there is just one, and after the funeral, after the visit, after sitting and trying to remember everything, he goes back to America, cheap chocolate still in his suitcase. He goes back to America and finds a way to never forget them. Three lines. Three names. Two blue. One purple.

“Pink would not show.”

And that was all he said. That was Radek’s fairy tale. And Carson opened the bluish-white moonshine, poured the drinks and toasted silently. To Radek. Two brothers and baby sister. To the fairy tale. Sad and cruel and bitter with no sweet.


End file.
